The thunder that had been silent for a long time now had a new action.
On February 16, the enterprise digital collection service platform launched by Xunlei Chain, a subsidiary of Xunlei Group, was officially launched. It is reported that the ThunderChain Enterprise Digital Collection Service Platform is based on the underlying technology of Thunderbolt Chain, and is a blockchain cloud service platform that provides enterprises and institutions with trusted depository technology and digital collection vouchers.
In this period when the concept of blockchain is prevalent, Xunlei, who has long chosen to transform to blockchain, seems to have found new possibilities. The secondary market also seems to have given a good response. As of the close of U.S. stocks on February 16, Eastern Time, Xunlei's stock price rose 2.2% to 1.86 yuan.
For Xunlei, would choosing a digital collection be the best option? Before the prospects of the NFT industry have cleared the thick fog, where will this road take Thunderbolt?
Born in the grass, he was also brilliant
Once Thunder, once stood on the cusp of capital.
In 2002, Zou Shenglong, who was still an international student, founded Xunlei in Silicon Valley. At that time, China's download market, The Internet Express was undoubtedly the absolute hegemon.
With a super high update frequency, Internet Express not only becomes the leader in the domestic download market, but also provides services to 219 countries around the world.
In 2003, Zou Shenglong returned to China with Thunderbolt, and a legend of downloading tool software also began from this time. The turning point began in 2004, when Xunlei's biggest competitor at the time, Internet Express, stopped updating and upgrading, simply because its developer, Hou Yantang, was fascinated by World of Warcraft.
History is always changed by small inadvertent moves. Xunlei, which has no competitors, began to develop rapidly, based on its own P2SP technology, and constantly seized the original market share of the express car.
At the same time, the domestic Internet has just emerged, and the surge in computer installed capacity has also brought a sufficient number of users to Xunlei. In an era when there was no concept of paid service purchases, a large number of pirated games, film and television resources, and software services were spread around the Internet by users.
As a result, Xunlei, which downloaded faster and was rich in resources, accumulated a large number of users, and Xunlei also became one of the must-install software on the computer of every user in that era.
By 2006, Xunlei had a share of more than 50% of the domestic download market, covering more than 110 million users, second only to QQ, becoming the second largest client software at that time. At that time, Xunlei could provide users with 90 million to 100 million downloads per day, which was obviously unmatched in the domestic market at that time.
In 2011, Xunlei decided to go to the United States to IPO, and by this time its share of the domestic download market had reached 76%, becoming "China's largest download service provider".
But this seems to be just the beginning of a landslide. On January 7, 2009, the release of 3G licenses kicked off the prelude to the era of mobile Internet, from the PC to the mobile terminal to become the trend of the times, Tencent held WeChat and hand Q, Ali targeted mobile payment with Alipay..... Internet giants are eyeing the entrance of mobile phones, ready to go.
However, Xunlei was caught in the confusion of listing, and the hidden worries of piracy problems, the coldness of the US stock market, and the shrinking of the download market at that time made Xunlei fail to catch up with the mobile Internet.
The terminal of web surfing shifted from PC to mobile phone, and failed to app in time, and the loss of users was inevitable. In Q1 2014, the number of Xunlei paid members reached 5.17 million, which was the second largest paid membership platform on the Internet in China at that time; by Q1 2017, the number of members was 4.08 million, and then in Q2 2020, the number of members was 3.9 million.
The number of paid members has fallen again and again, directly or indirectly laying the groundwork for the loneliness of Thunderbolt.
Whether blockchain can become a "cure" medicine
What caused the rapid thunder and fall was not only the failure to seize the wind of the times, but also the pain point of the natural difficulty of tool software.
In the early days, Xunlei's business model used built-in advertising and set pop-up windows to make money, but this was at the cost of affecting the user experience, and because of the dissemination of vulgar content, it was once stopped by the Cyberspace Administration of China.
Another form is the launch of paid services, after users become members, they can enjoy high-speed downloads, offline downloads and other acceleration functions, which leads to thunder and curse.
However, Xunlei wants to find profit growth points again, it is not an easy task, how to transform from a single download tool software, has become Xunlei's current top priority.
Cloud computing seems to be the savior of Thunderbolt. In 2014, Xunlei launched the "Crystal Project", using cloud computing and blockchain technology to explore new possibilities. Its Star Cloud has reached cooperation with iQiyi, Station B, Kuaishou and other video and live broadcast enterprise customers.
Since 2016, Xunlei's cloud computing and value-added service revenue has grown rapidly, surpassing subscription revenue in 2017, and in the 2017 Xunlei financial report, cloud computing products were highlighted.
From the perspective of time span, Xunlei also seems to be an early domestic enterprise that entered the blockchain market. Some well-known blockchain businesses, such as Play guest cloud and net core cloud, are all blockchain projects under Xunlei.
Thunderbolt did have a certain foresight. In 2021, DAO, NFT and metacosm became the hot keywords at that time, and the metacosm set off a boom in the capital market. Behind all three, there is an inseparable connection with the blockchain.
Blockchain is not only one of the six supporting technologies of the metaverse, but also one of the basic components of the digital collection that has attracted much attention today. Therefore, Xunlei, which has accumulated a technical foundation, is also more successful in the metaverse era.
The enterprise digital collection service platform released by Xunlei this time is mainly used to provide enterprises and institutions with a full-link service system such as digital collection design, casting, display and management. In addition to pure pictures, the platform also supports different types of digital content, such as game props, audio and video, collectibles, event tickets, etc.
In essence, the platform is equivalent to empowering enterprises with the ability of blockchain technology, helping enterprises to integrate and adapt to the future world of blockchain technology.
Taking the NFT market as an example, according to the data on the official website of CryptoPunks, as of October 2021, the number of CryptoPunks sold in the past year was 11,752, with a total cumulative sales of $1.43 billion. According to the data provided by the official website of Nonfungible, the number of NFT buyers in 2020 increased by 66.94% year-on-year, the number of sellers increased by 24.7% year-on-year, and the number of NFT active wallets exceeded 150,000 in October this year, an increase of 97.09% over 2019.
Even if the heat of the relevant market soars, this is only a warm-up. After all, the concept of meta-universe is still only a fantasy at this stage, and there is still a distance from landing and real productization. The "2020-2021 Metaversmic Development Research Report" released by the New Media Research Center of Tsinghua University this year pointed out that the productization of large-scale "metacosmology" is still very far away.
"In the future, we will achieve 10 million paid members, cover 1 billion personal terminals, and create tens of billions of value." This sentence, which was once used as the corporate vision of Xunlei, now seems to be far away, but at least for Xunlei, this time it has not missed the market outlet.
However, there is still a long way to go.